The Mindful Hack is a Web log of Denyse O'Leary, co-author of The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul (HarperOne August 2007). The Mindful Hack publishes information of interest on the relationship between the mind and the brain. O'Leary also publishes the Post-Darwinist, which keeps up with the intelligent design controversy.

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Friday, December 05, 2008

New atheism: Widely read but mostly dead, commentator says

You write that "God is the future, and atheism is on its way out." How can you be so sure?

It's a matter of demographics. For example, one could make the argument that democracy is the future, and totalitarianism is on the way out. This doesn't mean that there won't be totalitarian governments, but it does mean that the ratio of totalitarian governments to free governments has been declining. A hundred years ago, there were only a dozen or so democracies in the world. Most other societies were governed by monarchs, tyrants, or inherited rulers. But by the 1940s and 1950s, you began to see an expansion of democracy. Another huge wave of democracy came along in the 1980s, and today, if you look around the world, you'll see that over half of the governments in existence are democratic. Clearly, democracy is the future. It's a prediction rooted in data.